eBay fraud and me: My absolutely ridiculous experience

No, I didn't bid $13,000 for 500 LED lights.

Whether it was outright fraud or just a prank, I don't know—but I do know that eBay UK shows about as much concern for identity theft as your average sea urchin.

Approximately one month ago, I received a notice from eBay UK saying I had won an auction for 500 LED lights at a cost of US$13,000. At first I thought it was some ridiculous phishing attempt, but the e-mail referenced my name. Checking out the links included, the message had every appearance of being legitimate.

Concerned that someone had gamed eBay into thinking that my e-mail address was associated with a valid eBay bidding account, I reached out to the company's UK support team. I wanted to let them know that someone had set up an account under my name and then bid successfully on an auction, even though their e-mail address had never been confirmed (such a confirmation would have necessarily arrived in my inbox). My message was brief: “Someone set up an account on eBay, [redacted], using my e-mail address. It is not me. Please cancel that account or at least stop sending me this person's e-mail. I live in the USA, not the UK.”

The response I received was ridiculous.

I realise the importance of this matter to you. Ken, let me share that sometimes, e-mail service providers 'recycle' an e-mail address. For example, someone may have had this e-mail address before you, joined eBay, and then after a period of inactivity, your e-mail service provider allowed you to choose the same e-mail address. If this is the first time that you registered an eBay account, and the e-mail address that you entered has already been used, I suggest you enter a different e-mail address to register your account. When registering on eBay, please ensure that the e-mail address you entered is not linked to another eBay account.

Lastly, please note that your e-mail address can only be used for one account at a time. This also applies to eBay User IDs. I trust this information is helpful. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

This nonsensical reply clearly indicated to me that someone was having reading comprehension issues. I responded: “I have had this e-mail address exclusively since the day Gmail launched. I believe someone is trying to engage in fraud. To wit: someone bid and won a $13,000 item and now I am getting e-mails asking that I pay it. Please delete this account!”

This was the point at which things crossed from the ridiculous to the shockingly absurd. eBay UK actually had the gall to tell me that I should log into an account that I never created and ask for the forgiveness of the seller of those 500 LED lights.

“I realise the importance of this issue to you, Ken," began eBay's response. It continued:

I can see that you are new on eBay and I am more happy to help you with this. To resolve this, as this was an honest mistake, the best thing to do is contact your seller '[redacted]' through e-mail or phone to explain the matter amicably. This type of situation can be resolved through an open and honest communication between buyers and sellers...

After clarifying the issue, you can ask them to open a Cancel Transaction case in the Resolution Centre for them to get their Final Value Fee credit they've incurred when you won the item. To make it easier, you can tell them the steps on how they can open a Cancel Transaction dispute in case they still don't know how.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to My eBay > Resolution Centre.
2. Click 'I sold an item - I want to cancel a transaction'.
3. Follow the instructions to open the case.

Opening the case triggers an e-mail for you to confirm that you've agreed to cancel the transaction. As soon as you confirm the cancellation, they can close the case and receive a credit for their Final Value Fee. This means you won't receive any negative remark on your account and the transaction will be recorded as mutually cancelled.

At this point, I was truly worked up. eBay's response was basically to make me do the dirty work to end a problem that the company should have been able to prevent in the first place. My final message to eBay UK ran:

“I fear that no one is paying attention to what I am telling you. I did not register this account. I have nothing to do with this account. I do not live in the UK. I do not use eBay. I am not going to sign in through an account I did not create in order to communicate with a seller. I had nothing to do with this transaction and I am not going to expend further effort to settle the matter. As I see it, the problem is on your end, and you need to address this.”

I received no further contact from eBay UK support, although they are happy to spam me with various enticements to bid on other items, despite having sent me a nastygram about never paying for the auction item I "won."

I have long been reticent about using services like eBay, and this experience has convinced me that the company is not only incapable of battling fraudulent behavior, it's unwilling even to make the attempt. I've heard it said that the rule on eBay is caveat emptor—buyer beware. But the caution should actually extend further than that. After all, I wasn't even a buyer.

I've had this sort of problem (accounts registered by notme, using my email.) I've had ATT Uverse service, I've had multiple dating Services, I've had Seattle Groupons. Never any reason to think anything was compromised, after staring at it long enough. The only one I took any action on was the ATT Uverse one, which ATT basically told me to let it ride, as it was obviously not billing to an e-mail address.

I know people who love ebay. I know people who have run successful businesses doing nothing more than trolling ebay for good deals and then reselling them on ebay, sometimes never even actually setting eyes on the merchandise.I'll probably never buy off ebay, at least nothing costing more than $100. It's just too loose, like an old whore, for me to be comfortable with it. Anecdotes like this opinion piece are too common to just pass them off as one person's chance bad experience.

Those lights look useful though. I usually use Ebay when I can't get it any other way.

Yeah, I've used eBay for discontinued items that I can't find through more legitimate channels.

Otherwise? Bleh.

And I'd want to ask how, precisely, you're supposed to log in to an account you didn't create? I guess you could try to reset the password. I wouldn't though, for fear that it might somehow "legitimize" the account.

What is the point of this for the person creating the eBay account? Piss off the seller by placing a fake winning bid so they never get paid? Piss off Ken by impersonating him? Or did the seller actually think that they could trick someone into sending them $13,000 because eBay told them to?

I've had this sort of problem (accounts registered by notme, using my email.) I've had ATT Uverse service, I've had multiple dating Services, I've had Seattle Groupons. Never any reason to think anything was compromised, after staring at it long enough. The only one I took any action on was the ATT Uverse one, which ATT basically told me to let it ride, as it was obviously not billing to an e-mail address.

Yeah, I get that a lot. One lady, in particular, insists on using my Gmail account as her own "disposable". Due to her indiscretion, I have a record of her phone number, address, medication refills and lingerie purchases. Those aren't even the more sensitive things, either. She's lucky I'm not a creep of some sort; I could stalk her so easily it isn't even funny.

I've had this sort of problem (accounts registered by notme, using my email.) I've had ATT Uverse service, I've had multiple dating Services, I've had Seattle Groupons. Never any reason to think anything was compromised, after staring at it long enough. The only one I took any action on was the ATT Uverse one, which ATT basically told me to let it ride, as it was obviously not billing to an e-mail address.

Yeah, I get that a lot. One lady, in particular, insists on using my Gmail account as her own "disposable". Due to her indiscretion, I have a record of her phone number, address, medication refills and lingerie purchases. Those aren't even the more sensitive things, either. She's lucky I'm not a creep of some sort; I could stalk her so easily it isn't even funny.

I think I have bought maybe 5 things on eBay over the last 10 years or whatever. Every time it has been more or less a decent experience but never really enjoyable. I count myself lucky.

I think they figured out early on that the 'winning' aspect of the service was the only real enticement to continue using the site since a lot of the time you don't really even get a great deal on your purchase. Most items I see there are more like advertisements for large resale groups where you can more easily order direct from their online store or they are single item sales from grandma's shed and if it shows up in less than acceptable condition, too bad for you.

Fortunately for eBay, the number of suckers who are willing to let their euphoria over 'winning' an auction override their common sense and good judgement is fairly high. Occasionally I have found an item there that was either unavailable elsewhere, or a particularly good deal because it was obviously used or refurbished. Other than that, it just isn't worth the hassle.

Given the unending nightmare stories I hear from others who have used the service (or like Ken, have not used the service yet suffered all the same), it really surprises me that they continue to do well as a business. I'm sure their purchase of PayPal has a lot to do with that, since they can then take a unilateral stance on any issue that might come up in about 99% of their transactions. Basically eBay is the Facebook of online shopping. Users are the commodity being sold because the service harvests money whether the transaction is successful or not and the 'customer service' eBay provides is solely aimed at maintaining their profit, as opposed to actually serving their users.

I've sold on eBay, but I've always hated buying on eBay. Auto-bid is annoying and when I attempt to bid on things, sometimes my email suddenly gets spammed with messages for "similar items".

With a single exception (officially sanctioned fan art); I've only ever used ebay's buy it now function. Mostly for low cost items where conventional etailers insistence on using UPS/FedEx instead of USPS would have resulted in a large (50-200%) price hike.

What is the point of this for the person creating the eBay account? Piss off the seller by placing a fake winning bid so they never get paid? Piss off Ken by impersonating him? Or did the seller actually think that they could trick someone into sending them $13,000 because eBay told them to?

Can you confirm that you are able to place bids on a freshly created ebay account without doing the email confirmation? Is there a chance this is an elaborate spear phishing attempt? I mean, they'd have your name if your email is something like ken.fisher@gmail.com.

I wonder as things like this (fraud, phone scammers, bad customer service with a company, etc) happen to the staff at Ars, if they feel a mixture of anger at the event but also a small feeling of pending joyful retribution given their field of work as tech journalist and the ultimate reporting of the event.

The jobs got to have some perks right?

I would love to see how this gets resolved. Getting e-mails like that from any company drive me up the bloody wall, especially ones that go to excessive lengths to hide phone numbers (or provide phone numbers but make it almost impossible to talk to a person, much less a person with critical thinking skills or allowed to use such skills.)

I used eBay in the beginning to buy and sell a few things, but it rapidly devolved into just piles and piles of junk... and often overpriced junk. I quit using eBay when, some years ago, they demanded my credit card number to have on file because I was using Gmail instead of a "legitimate" email address.

What is the point of this for the person creating the eBay account? Piss off the seller by placing a fake winning bid so they never get paid? Piss off Ken by impersonating him? Or did the seller actually think that they could trick someone into sending them $13,000 because eBay told them to?

This the most curious part to me. Why? Why bother with this.

Now, as it turns out, there is some other "Ken Fisher" who lives in the UK, and whose emails routinely come into my inbox. It's like he gives out the wrong address on Gmail. I get all kinds of strange stuff. So I thought it might be him.

But who buys 13 grand of these lights? That leads me to think it was some prank.

That's probably unnecessary. All they have to go on is a so-called "Ken Fisher" that lives in the UK and an email address. They don't have a street address or any other personally-identifiable information that could be used to link this back to our Ken in the US and thus affect his credit.

I've had pretty good experience as a buyer on Ebay, but it takes research and knowledge about the items you are buying in order to get a fair deal. Sometimes it's the only place to get something, especially if its an obsolete item. Working in broadcast, we've needed parts for old gear that you can't buy new or at least not for a reasonable price, and I've found many of those items there.

Selling on ebay is however a different matter, as they have created quite a number of hurdles for sellers to go through, and idiot buyers can give pretty nasty feedback no matter how clearly you state an item is for parts only and it can't be repaired. Not to mention how long it can take to get paid from ebay. I don't think for most people its worth it being a seller on ebay unless you are doing quite a lot of volume.

I've purchased and sold quite a few things on eBay. And I personally haven't had a bad experience, though I know others who have. If you are buying, decide before you bid what the most is you are willing to pay. If someone outbids you, let it go. You don't *have* to win that item you know.

It took me months to get Chase to stop sending me the transactions of some woman who shares my first initial and last name. She used my email address on her online banking, and subsequently set up a spending alert for anything over $5. I learned all sorts of things about her due to the barrage of emails. Chase refused time after time to do anything about it, telling me that they can only make changes to an account with the explicit permission of the account holder (which I get). They finally caved in when I made it clear to them that they were exposing someone's private financial data to an unknown third party and I'd be happy to talk to a news organization about the security flaw in their system that arises from not validating email addresses. Suddenly, I got an email saying the problem was taken care of and I no longer received spending alerts for that woman in Texas I've never met.

I've had this sort of problem (accounts registered by notme, using my email.) I've had ATT Uverse service, I've had multiple dating Services, I've had Seattle Groupons. Never any reason to think anything was compromised, after staring at it long enough. The only one I took any action on was the ATT Uverse one, which ATT basically told me to let it ride, as it was obviously not billing to an e-mail address.

Yeah, I get that a lot. One lady, in particular, insists on using my Gmail account as her own "disposable". Due to her indiscretion, I have a record of her phone number, address, medication refills and lingerie purchases. Those aren't even the more sensitive things, either. She's lucky I'm not a creep of some sort; I could stalk her so easily it isn't even funny.

Edit: I also get similar mail from others. She's just the worst case.

Stalking doesn't immediately come to mind but sending a letter to that person to knock it off does.

That's probably unnecessary. All they have to go on is a so-called "Ken Fisher" that lives in the UK and an email address. They don't have a street address or any other personally-identifiable information that could be used to link this back to our Ken in the US and thus affect his credit.

The fun thing about ID theft is that "probably" doesn't mean you won't get hit. There are now 4 credit reporting agencies which means that you can get one free credit report per quarter and be far more certain that you aren't getting your ID stolen in a way that will affect you.

I got a similar level of service the one time I (as a seller) called up eBay support to report a buyer who was doing dishonest stuff and violating eBay policy. I ended up angrier at eBay than at the buyer, as I went in circles trying to explain what was going on. In the end, I successfully managed to get the phone monkey to shift from not understanding the problem to understanding, but just not caring about it.

It's a shame that there isn't better competition for eBay so I could take my business elsewhere. Amazon comes close in capability, but comes up short in actually getting things sold, for a guy who's just trying to sell some used cymbals. Amazon isn't really viable for selling used goods.

I've bought almost 1,000 items on eBay (mostly from their USA site, but not always). I've had a very few problems, mostly from a misunderstanding, but no more than a handful, and always resolved. Friends have had problems that were resolved by eBay, or between themselves and the seller, or buyer.

This is the first time I've ever heard of a problem like this, though I do get get phishing e-mails from time to time, which I ignore completely. I suggest that if something like this happens to someone, just ignore it.

I used eBay last month very successfully. I have and old webserver (about 8y old) sitting in my closet and I didn't have any backup of it. A diode on the board for the hard drive blew up and took out the drive. I hopped on eBay and within a few minutes found the same model drive (from 2004) for $5. Purchased it, got it a few days later and resurrected the hard drive.

Now, as it turns out, there is some other "Ken Fisher" who lives in the UK, and whose emails routinely come into my inbox. It's like he gives out the wrong address on Gmail. I get all kinds of strange stuff. So I thought it might be him.

But who buys 13 grand of these lights? That leads me to think it was some prank.

There's a Lee Hutchinson in the UK who's been doing this to me for years. I've gotten spa appointment confirmations, invites from friends to come over and watch "footie," casino membership confirmations, and once every year or so I'll even get a response from an employer, inviting me to come in for an interview.

Maybe UK Ken Fisher and UK Lee Hutchinson should get together and take a "LRN 2 EMAIL" class.

Yes, eBay is definitely not interested in pursuing fraud cases. I bought some disk drives from a guy there a while back. The first one was actually intercepted via UPS and returned because the originating company said it was fraud. The second item he sent me to replace it came from some other random person and was bought from Walmart at a price higher than what I paid! I told eBay about these two and they weren't interested. Basically, telling me, "Well, you paid your money and you got your item. What more could you want?" Finally, the seller reimbursed my money and then I ended up also receiving my items! It's now been more than 6 months so I guess I just got them for free because the seller got worried that I was onto them.

I had a similar problem with Paypal (not surprisingly, owned by eBay...) after someone tried to set up an account using my email address.

I never activated the account in question, yet wanted to make sure nobody could do so or make any transactions using my email, in case they had any more of my information. So I immediately rang PayPal, and was told, pretty much word for word, what eBay told you in their first reply.

Someone may have "registered my recycled email address". After trying to explain how absurd this sounded, and having it repeated to me that it was perfectly logical (where do they get this idea from, anyway?), I asked again for the account to be deleted. PayPal refused. It was only after I persisted, and asked many more times than I should have had to, that they agreed to block, but not delete, the account in question.

It seems eBay/PayPal aren't exactly great at rectifying problems with their services.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.